HELP... my mac is stuck in windows.

T

tommytaro

Registered
allright, so here's the deal. i got a new imac, and decided to install windows 7 in another partition so i could play games. bad idea for me. something went wrong somewhere, and my mac osx partition ended up being corrupt or something while the newly installed windows one was fine. not sure how it happened, lol. half the time when i would pick my mac osx partition, it would work, and half the time, it wouldn't even start. eventually it irritated me so much that I backed up everything, and then i deleted the entire partition using my friends mac osx repair cd... but i wasn't able to install mac osx because the cd was the one that came with HIS mac unfortionately... lol


so, i ended up ordering a copy of my repair cds from apple (i had lost mine), and now that they are here, i tried firing them up. holding down Option brings up my Windows partition, and the repair cd, but every time I click the repair cd, it just boots into windows instead. I've tried resetting the PRAM, but not the other thing (where you unplug your mac for a bit), i think i'll try that next, although I don't think it will make a difference. was deleting/formatting my non-working macosx partition with my friends repair disc a bad idea? i hope to god that's not the reason my own repair disc won't properly boot now.... what should I do? I've also tried holding down C when I boot, which just brings me to a screen to choose an OS to start from (with of course Windows 7 being the only one).


any ideas?

also, if I have to uninstall windows 7 too, how do it do that? or even delete partitions? because i have no way to get to a Disk Utility.
 
Assuming this is the 2011 iMac, the Installation Disks should be DVDs and not CDs. It is possible that they sent you defective/wrong DVDs, but if it is "brand new" then I would hope they would not make that mistake. However, if you boot holding the "Option" key it should give you the option of booting to the Windoz or Installation/Repair disk. If that is not happening, then you have something wrong with the disks. If you do not want to bother with those, you can see if Apple will replace them with a Snow Leopard disk that should boot your Mac.

and then i deleted the entire partition using my friends mac osx repair cd... but i wasn't able to install mac osx because the cd was the one that came with HIS mac unfortionately... lol
Click to expand...

Did you merely erase the partition or remove it. If the former, may have needed to be formatted as a Mac. If the later, you basically have a Windoz HD.

--J.D.
 
Doctor X said:
Assuming this is the 2011 iMac, the Installation Disks should be DVDs and not CDs. It is possible that they sent you defective/wrong DVDs, but if it is "brand new" then I would hope they would not make that mistake. However, if you boot holding the "Option" key it should give you the option of booting to the Windoz or Installation/Repair disk. If that is not happening, then you have something wrong with the disks. If you do not want to bother with those, you can see if Apple will replace them with a Snow Leopard disk that should boot your Mac.



Did you merely erase the partition or remove it. If the former, may have needed to be formatted as a Mac. If the later, you basically have a Windoz HD.

--J.D.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I press option, and the DVD comes up, but when I click it, windows just boots instead. I just want to erase my computer and make it like new. I don't need to save anything.
 
Put your OS X installer DVD in the drive, then make sure your iMac is shut OFF. Press and hold the power button for about 5 seconds, and it will shut off.
Release the power button.

Then, press and release the power button, while holding the letter C on your keyboard.
That will force your iMac to boot from that DVD. Continue through the first couple of screens, until you see the menus at the top of the screen. Open Disk Utility, from the Utilities menu. Select your hard drive (the line with manufacturers info), and click the Partition tab. Click the Volume Scheme drop-down, and select 1 Partition. Name your partition, if you like. Click the Options button, and make sure that GUID is selected, and click continue.
Make sure that Format shows MacOS Extended (journaled), and then click the Apply button.
That process will take you back to one partition, for sure, and when you quit Disk Utility, you will return to the Installer - so just continue on with that. Your iMac will automatically restart when that finishes. Setup your user account, and then insert your OS X software disk #2 to complete the installation with your other bundled apps, mostly the iLife suite.
That should get you going again with a fresh install!
 
DeltaMac said:
Put your OS X installer DVD in the drive, then make sure your iMac is shut OFF. Press and hold the power button for about 5 seconds, and it will shut off.
Release the power button.

Then, press and release the power button, while holding the letter C on your keyboard.
That will force your iMac to boot from that DVD. Continue through the first couple of screens, until you see the menus at the top of the screen. Open Disk Utility, from the Utilities menu. Select your hard drive (the line with manufacturers info), and click the Partition tab. Click the Volume Scheme drop-down, and select 1 Partition. Name your partition, if you like. Click the Options button, and make sure that GUID is selected, and click continue.
Make sure that Format shows MacOS Extended (journaled), and then click the Apply button.
That process will take you back to one partition, for sure, and when you quit Disk Utility, you will return to the Installer - so just continue on with that. Your iMac will automatically restart when that finishes. Setup your user account, and then insert your OS X software disk #2 to complete the installation with your other bundled apps, mostly the iLife suite.
That should get you going again with a fresh install!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply DeltaMac! Unfortionately, I've already tried doing that. Booting holding C doesn't work either, it just brings me to a Windows 7 screen to choose an OS (Windows being the only one). However, when I hold Option, the CD comes up on the white screen along with my Windows partition. But the CD says "EFI Boot", and if I choose it, windows just boots instead.


Also something else to note... I've tried remote installing it too. In that case, I can choose the CD from my imac (and it is properly labeled saying "Mac OSX Installation DVD"), but after loading, it just shows an error symbol. I can't see how just trying to install Windows 7 could have caused all of this problems. I just want to erase all of this and start over, but it doesn't seem like there is a way to now. It's very frustrating... I can't even use Mac OS on my iMac!
 
Are you using the correct installer DVD, same as the disk that came with your new iMac, and NOT the one used for your older iMac? The results that you describe sounds like you are using an older version of OS X, which won't boot your Mac. Be sure to look at the label on that disk, and tell me what OS X version number is showing on the disk label. A new iMac would be OS X 10.6.6, or newer. Anything older will NOT work, and won't boot your iMac. And, of course, the commercial Snow Leopard DVD will also not work, because the 10.6.3 on that disk is too old to boot a new Mac.
 
DeltaMac said:
Are you using the correct installer DVD, same as the disk that came with your new iMac, and NOT the one used for your older iMac? The results that you describe sounds like you are using an older version of OS X, which won't boot your Mac. Be sure to look at the label on that disk, and tell me what OS X version number is showing on the disk label. A new iMac would be OS X 10.6.6, or newer. Anything older will NOT work, and won't boot your iMac. And, of course, the commercial Snow Leopard DVD will also not work, because the 10.6.3 on that disk is too old to boot a new Mac.
Click to expand...

Yes, correct I am using the DVD for my iMac. This is my first Apple computer, so I've never owned any other installer DVDs. However it is a replacement I ordered from Apple by giving them my computer's serial number and other info. So it should be for this computer as far as I know.

As far as what version of Mac OS it has, since it's a replacement it doesn't say. However, I did a Google search of the number printed on the DVD, and it came up with a few posts from other websites mentioning OS 10.6.4. And also, the copyright on the disc says 2010 so it's possible it's an older version. Why would they send me a non-working old version of Mac OSX? I did buy my iMac back in Dec 2010 however. But still.

Here is the Google search.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=srf2z691-6781-a
 
Then, either the DVD is faulty, or your DVD drive needs cleaing, or replacing. You can also use an external burner to boot to your installer, and there's other possible options if you have an external hard drive, etc.
 
DeltaMac said:
Then, either the DVD is faulty, or your DVD drive needs cleaing, or replacing. You can also use an external burner to boot to your installer, and there's other possible options if you have an external hard drive, etc.
Click to expand...

The DVD drive can't be faulty, because I can use it perfectly in the Windows partition, and I can even boot from the Windows 7 installation disk. Also, as a side note, I had an idea to boot from the Windows 7, and that way I was able delete all my partitions and erase everything from my Mac's hard drive. However, the Mac Install DVD still won't boot.

Also, booting from verbose mode gives me this error:

TS3676-mbp_early2011-verbose_mode-001-en.png


The verbose mode freezes at that point. Could that indicate an error in not using a new enough version of the Mac Install DVD? There's always the chance apple sent me the wrong version, since it does come up "EFI Boot" on the boot menu. Just speculating. Since my drive is in working order I can't figure out any other explanation. Just seems strange to me that even though I gave them my serial number and threw money at them and all for these replacement disks, that they are faulty somehow.
 
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